to this conclusion. Our habit of using Latin translations of the
terms of Greek grammar has tended to obscure the fact that they
belong in almost every case to the ordinary vocabulary of music. The
word for 'accent' ([Greek: tonos]) is simply the musical term for
'pitch' or 'key.' The words 'acute' ([Greek: oxys]) and 'grave'
([Greek: barys]) mean nothing more than 'high' and 'low' in pitch. A
syllable may have two accents, just as in music a syllable may be
sung with more than one note. Similarly the 'quantity' of each
syllable answers to the time of a musical note, and the rule that a
long syllable is equal to two short ones is no doubt approximately
correct. Consequently every Greek word (enclitics being reckoned as
parts of a word) is a sort of musical phrase, and every sentence is a
more or less definite melody--[Greek: logôdes ti melos], as it is
called by Aristoxenus (p. 18 Meib.). Moreover the accent in the
modern sense, the _ictus_ or stress of the voice, appears to be quite
independent of the pitch or 'tonic' accent: for in Greek poetry the
_ictus_ ([Greek: arsis]) is determined by the metre, with which the
tonic accent evidently has nothing to do. In singing, accordingly,
the tonic accents disappear; for the melody takes their place, and
gives each syllable a new pitch, on which (as we shall presently see)
the spoken pitch has no influence. The rise and fall of the voice in
ordinary speaking is perceptible enough in English, though it is more
marked in other European languages. Helmholtz tells us--with tacit
reference to the speech of North Germany--that an affirmative
sentence generally ends with a drop in the tone of about a Fourth,
while an interrogative is marked by a rise which is often as much as
a Fifth[1]. In Italian the interrogative form is regularly given, not
by a particle or a change in the order of the words, but by a rise of
pitch. The Gregorian church music, according to a series of rules
quoted by Helmholtz (_l. c._), marked a comma by a rise of a Tone, a
colon by a fall of a Semitone; a full stop by a Tone above, followed
by a Fourth below, the 'reciting note'; and an interrogation by a
phrase of the form _d b c d_ (_c_ being the reciting note).
These examples, however, do little towards enabling modern scholars
to form a notion of the Greek system of accentuation. In these and
similar cases it is the _sentence as a whole_ which is modified by
the tonic accent, whereas in Greek it is the individual _word_. It is
true that the accent of a word may be affected by its place in the
sentence: as is seen in the loss of the accent of oxytone words when
not followed by a pause, in the anastrophe of prepositions, and in
the treatment of the different classes of enclitics. But in all these
instances it is the intonation of the word as such, not of the
sentence, which is primarily concerned. What they really prove is
that the musical accent is not so invariable as the stress accent in
English or German, but may depend upon the collocation of the word,
or upon the degree of emphasis which it has in a particular use.
[Footnote 1: _Tonempfindungen_, p. 364 (ed. 1863).]
(2) The same conclusion may be drawn from the terms in which the
ancient writers on music endeavour to distinguish musical and
ordinary utterance.
Aristoxenus begins his _Harmonics_ by observing that there are two
movements of the voice, not properly discriminated by any previous
writer; namely, the _continuous_, which is the movement
characteristic of speaking, and the _discrete_ or that which proceeds
by _intervals_, the movement of singing. In the latter the voice
remains for a certain time on one note, and then passes by a definite
interval to another. In the former it is continually gliding by
imperceptible degrees from higher to lower or the reverse[1]. In this
kind of movement the rise and fall of the voice is marked by the
_accents_ ([Greek: prosôdiai]), which accordingly form the melody, as
it may be called, of spoken utterance[2]. Later writers state the
distinction in much the same language. Nicomachus tells us that the
two movements were first discriminated by the Pythagoreans. He dwells
especially on the ease with which we pass from one to the other. If
the notes and intervals of the speaking voice are allowed to be
separate and distinct, the form of utterance becomes singing[3].
Similarly Aristoxenus says that we do not rest upon a note, unless we
are led to do so by the influence of feeling ([Greek: an mê dia
pathos pote eis toiautên kinêsin anankasthômen elthein]).
[Footnote 1: Aristox., _Harm._ p. 3 Meib. [Greek: kineitai men gar
kai dialegomenôn hêmôn kai melôdountôn tên eirêmenên kinêsin; oxy gar
kai bary dêlon hôs en amphoterois toutois enestin.] Also p. 8 [Greek:
dyo tines eisin ideai kinêseôs, hê te synechês kai hê diastêmatikê;
kata men oun tên synechê topon tina diexienai phainetai hê phônê tê
aisthêsei houtôs hôs an mêdamou histamenê, k.t.l.] And p. 9 [Greek:
tên oun synechê logikên einai phanen, k.t.l.]]
[Footnote 2: Ibid. p. 18 Meib. [Greek: tou ge logôdous kechôristai
tautê to mousikon melos; legetai gar dê kai logôdes ti melos, to
synkeimenon ek tôn prosôdiôn tôn en tois onomasin; physikon gar to
epiteinein kai anienai en tô dialegesthai.]]
[Footnote 3: Nicomachus, _Enchiridion_, p. 4 [Greek: ei gar tis ê
dialegomenos ê apologoumenos tini ê anaginôskôn ge ekdêla metaxy
kath' hekaston phthongon poiei ta megethê, diistanôn kai metaballôn
tên phônên ap' allou eis allon, ouketi legein ho toioutos oude
anaginôskein alla meleazein legetai.]]
According to the rhetorician Dionysius of Halicarnassus the interval
used in the melody of spoken utterance is approximately a Fifth, or
three tones and a half ([Greek: dialektou men oun melos heni
metreitai diastêmati tô legomenô dia pente, hôs engista; kai oute
epiteinetai pera tôn triôn tonôn kai hêmitoniou epi to oxy oute
anietai tou chôriou toutou pleion epi to bary][1]). He gives an
interesting example (quoted above on p. 91) from the _Orestes_ of
Euripides, to show that when words are set to music no account is
taken of the accents, or spoken melody. Not merely are the intervals
varied (instead of being nearly uniform), but the rise and fall of
the notes does not answer to the rise and fall of the syllables in
ordinary speech. This statement is rendered the more interesting from
the circumstance that the inscription discovered by Mr. Ramsay
(_supra_, p. 89), which is about a century later, does exhibit
precisely this correspondence. Apparently, then, the melody of the
inscription represents a new idea in music,--an attempt to bring it
into a more direct connexion with the tones of the speaking voice.
The fact of such an attempt being made seems to indicate that the
divergence between the two kinds of utterance was becoming more
marked than had formerly been the case. It may be compared with the
invention of recitative in the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Aristides Quintilianus (p. 7 Meib.) recognises a third or
intermediate movement of the voice, viz. that which is employed in
the recitation of poetry. It is probable that Aristides is one of the
latest writers on the subject, and we may conjecture that in his time
the Greek
[Footnote 1: _De Compositione Verborum_, c. 11, p. 58 Reisk.]
language had in great measure lost the original tonic accents, and
with them the quasi-melodious character which they gave to prose
utterance.
In the view which these notices suggest the difference between
speaking and singing is reduced to one of degree. It is analysed in
language such as we might use to express the difference between a
monotonous and a varied manner of speaking, or between the sounds of
an Aeolian harp and those of a musical instrument.
(3) What has been said of melody in the two spheres of speech and
song applies also _mutatis mutandis_ to rhythm. In English the time
or quantity of syllables is as little attended to as the pitch. But
in Greek the distinction of long and short furnished a prose rhythm
which was a serious element in their rhetoric. In the rhythm of
music, according to Dionysius, the quantity of syllables could be
neglected, just as the accent was neglected in the melody[1]. This,
however, does not mean that the natural time of the syllables could
be treated with the freedom which we see in a modern composition. The
regularity of lyric metres is sufficient to prove that the increase
or diminution of natural quantity referred to by Dionysius was kept
within narrow limits, the nature of which is to be gathered from the
remains of the ancient system of Rhythmic. From these sources we
learn with something like certainty that the rhythm of ordinary
speech, as determined by the succession of long or short syllables,
was the basis not only of metres intended for recitation, such as the
hexameter and the iambic trimeter, but also of lyrical rhythm of
every kind.
[Footnote 1: _De Comp._ c. 11, p. 64 [Greek: to de auto ginetai kai
peri tous rhythmous; hê men gar pezê lexis oudenos oute onomatos oute
rhêmatos biazetai tous chronous oude metatithêsin, all' oias
pareilêphe tê physei tas syllabas, tas te makras kai tas bracheias,
toiautas phylattei; hê de mousikê te kai rhythmikê metaballousin
autas meiousai kai parauxousai, ôite pollakis eis tanantia
metachôrein; ou gar tais syllabais apeuthynousi tous chronous, alla
tois chronois tas syllabas.]]
(4) As to the use of the stress accent in Greek prose we are without
direct information. In verse it appears as the metrical _ictus_ or
_arsis_ of each foot, which answers to what English musicians call
the 'strong beat' or accented part of the bar[1]. In the Homeric
hexameter the ictus is confined to long syllables, and appears to
have some power of lengthening a short or doubtful syllable. In the
Attic poetry which was written in direct imitation of colloquial
speech, viz. the tragic and comic trimeter, there is no necessary
connexion between the ictus and syllabic length: but on the other
hand a naturally long syllable which is without the ictus may be
rhythmically short. In lyrical versification the ictus does not seem
to have any connexion with quantity: and on the whole we may gather
that it was not until the Byzantine period of Greek that it came to
be recognised as a distinct factor in pronunciation. The chief
elements of utterance--pitch, time and stress--were independent in
ancient Greek speech, just as they are in music. And the fact that
they were independent goes a long way to prove our main contention,
viz. that ancient Greek speech had a peculiar quasi-musical
character, consequently that the difficulty which modern scholars
feel in understanding the ancient statements on such matters as
accent and quantity is simply the difficulty of conceiving a form of
utterance of which no examples can now be observed.
[Footnote 1: The metrical accent or ictus was marked in ancient
notation by points placed over the accented syllable. These points
have been preserved in Mr. Ramsay's musical inscription (see the
Appendix, p. 133) and in one or two places of the fragment of the
_Orestes_ (p. 130). Hence Dr. Crusius has been able to restore the
rhythm with tolerable certainty, and has made the interesting
discovery that in both pieces the ictus falls as a rule on a short
syllable. The only exceptions in the inscription are circumflexed
syllables, where the long vowel or diphthong is set to two notes, the
first of which is short and accented. The accents on the short first
syllables of the dochmiacs of Euripides are a still more unexpected
evidence of the same rhythmical tendency.]
* * * * *
The conception which we have thus been led to form of ancient Greek
as it was spoken is not without bearing on the main subject of these
pages. For if the language even in its colloquial form had qualities
of rhythm and intonation which gave it this peculiar half musical
character, so that singing and speaking were more closely akin than
they ever are in our experience, we may expect to find that music was
influenced in some measure by this state of things. What is there,
then, in the special characteristics of Greek music which can be
connected with the exceptional relation in which it stood to
language?
Greek music was primarily and chiefly vocal. Instrumental music was
looked upon as essentially subordinate,--an accompaniment or at best
an imitation of singing. For in the view of the Greeks the words
([Greek: lexis]) were an integral part of the whole composition. They
contained the ideas, while the music with its variations of time
([Greek: rhythmos]) and pitch ([Greek: harmonia]) furnished a natural
vehicle for the appropriate feelings. Purely instrumental music could
not do this, because it could not convey the ideas or impressions
fitted to be the object of feeling. Hence we find Plato complaining
on this ground of the separation of poetry and music which was
beginning to be allowed in his time. The poets, he says, rend asunder
the elements of music; they separate rhythm and dance movements from
melody, putting unmusical language into metre, and again make melody
and rhythm without words, employing the lyre and the flute without
the voice: so that it is most difficult, when rhythm and melody is
produced without language, to know what it means, or what subject
worthy of the name it represents ([Greek: kai hotô eoike tôn
axiologôn mimêmatôn]). It is utterly false taste, in Plato's opinion,
to use the flute or the lyre otherwise than as an accompaniment to
dance and song[1]. Similarly in the Aristotelian _Problems_ (xix. 10)
it is asked why, although the human voice is the most pleasing,
singing without words, as in humming or whistling, is not more
agreeable than the flute or the lyre. Shall we say, the writer
answers, 'that the human voice too is comparatively without charm if
it does not _represent_ something? ([Greek: ê oud' ekei, ean mê
mimêtai, homoiôs hêdy?]) That is to say, music is expressive of
_feeling_, which may range from acute passion to calm and lofty
sentiment, but feeling must have an object, and this can only be
adequately given by language. Thus language is, in the first instance
at least, the matter to which musical treatment gives artistic form.
In modern times the tendency is to regard instrumental music as the
highest form of the art, because in instrumental music the artist
creates his work, not by taking ideas and feelings as he finds them
already expressed in language, but directly, by forming an
independent vehicle of feeling,--a new language, as it were, of
passion and sentiment,--out of the absolute relations of movement and
sound.
The intimate connexion in Greek music between words and melody may be
shown in various particulars. The modern practice of basing a musical
composition--a long and elaborate chorus, for example--upon a few
words, which are repeated again and again as the music is developed,
would have been impossible in Greece.
[Footnote 1: Plato, _Legg._ p. 669.]
It becomes natural when the words are not an integral part of the
work, but only serve to announce the idea on which it is based, and
which the music brings out under successive aspects. The same may be
said of the use of a melody with many different sets of words. Greek
writers regard even the repetition of the melody in a strophe and
antistrophe as a concession to the comparative weakness of a chorus.
With the Greeks, moreover, the union in one artist of the functions
of poet and musician must have tended to a more exquisite adaptation
of language and music than can be expected when the work of art is
the product of divided labour. In Greece the principle of the
interdependence of language, metre, and musical sound was carried
very far. The different recognised styles had each certain metrical
forms and certain musical scales or keys appropriated to them, in
some cases also a certain dialect and vocabulary. These various
elements were usually summed up in an ethnical type, one of those
which played so large a part in their political history. Such a term
as Dorian was not applied to a particular scale at random, but
because that scale was distinctive of Dorian music: and Dorian music,
again, was one aspect of Dorian temper and institutions, Dorian
literature and thought.
Whether the Greeks were acquainted with harmony--in the modern sense
of the word--is a question that has been much discussed, and may now
be regarded as settled[1]. It is clear that the Greeks were
acquainted with the phenomena on which harmony depends, viz. the
effect produced by sounding certain notes together. It appears also
that they made some use of harmony,--and of dissonant as well as
consonant intervals,--in instrumental accompaniment ([Greek:
krousis]). On the other hand it was unknown in their vocal music,
except in the form of bass and treble voices singing the same melody.
In the instrumental accompaniment it was only an occasional ornament,
not a necessary or regular part of the music. Plato speaks of it in
the _Laws_ as something which those who learn music as a branch of
liberal education should not attempt[1]. The silence of the technical
writers, both as to the use of harmony and as to the tonality of the
Greek scale, points in the same direction. Evidently there was no
_system_ of harmony,--no notion of the effect of _successive_
harmonies, or of two distinct _parts_ or progressions of notes
harmonising with each other.
[Footnote 1: On this point I may refer to the somewhat fuller
treatment in Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_, art. MUSICA (Vol.
II, p. 199, ed. 1890-91).]
The want of harmony is to be connected not only with the defective
tonality which was probably characteristic of Greek music,--we have
seen (p. 42) that there is some evidence of tonality,--but still more
with the non-harmonic quality of many of the intervals of which their
scales were composed. We have repeatedly dwelt upon the variety and
strangeness (to our apprehension) of these intervals. Modern writers
are usually disposed to underrate their importance, or even to
explain them away. The Enharmonic, they point out, was produced by
the interpolation of a note which may have been only a passing note
or _appoggiatura_. The Chromatic also, it is said, was regarded as
too difficult for ordinary performers, and most of its varieties went
out of use at a comparatively early period. Yet the accounts which we
find in writers so remote in time and so opposed in their theoretical
views as Aristoxenus and Ptolemy, bear the strongest testimony to the
reality and persistence of
[Footnote 1: Plato, _Legg_. p. 812 d [Greek: panta oun ta toiauta mê
prospherein tois mellousin en trisin etesi to tês mousikês chrêsimon
eklêpsesthai dia tachous.]]
these non-diatonic scales. And we have the decisive fact that of the
six scales of the cithara given by Ptolemy (see p. 85) not one is
diatonic in the modern sense of the word. It may be alleged on the
other side that the ideal scale in the _Timaeus_ of Plato is purely
diatonic, and exhibits the strictest Pythagorean division. But that
scale is primarily a framework of mathematical ratios, and could not
take notice of intervals which had not yet been identified with
ratios. It is not certain when the discovery of Pythagoras was
extended to the non-diatonic scales. Even in the _Sectio Canonis_ of
Euclid there is no trace of knowledge that any intervals except those
of the Pythagorean diatonic scale had a numerical or (as we should
say) physical basis[1].
[Footnote 1: In Euclid's _Sectio Canonis_ the Pythagorean division is
assumed, and there is no hint of any other ratio than those which
Pythagoras discovered. Prop. xvii shows how to find the Enharmonic
Lichanos and Paranêtê by means of the Fourth and Fifth. Prop. xviii
proves against Aristoxenus (of course without naming him), that a
[Greek: pyknon] cannot be divided into two equal intervals; but there
is no attempt to explain the nature of the Enharmonic diesis. It is
worth notice that in these propositions the Lichanos and Paranêtê of
the Enharmonic scale are called [Greek: lichanos] and [Greek:
paranêtê] simply, as though the Enharmonic were the only genus--a
usage which agrees with that of the Aristotelian _Problems_ (supra,
p. 33).
According to Ptolemy (i. 13) the Pythagorean philosopher Archytas was
the author of a new division of the tetrachord for each of the three
genera. In it the natural Major Third (5: 4) was given for the large
interval of the Enharmonic, in place of the Pythagorean ditone (81:
64); and the Diatonic was the same as the Middle Soft Diatonic of
Ptolemy. But, as Westphal long ago pointed out (_Harmonik und
Melopöie_, p. 230, ed. 1863), this scheme is probably the work of the
later Pythagorean school. It seems to be unknown to Plato and
Aristoxenus,--the latter wrote a life of Archytas--and also to
Euclid, as we have seen. The next scheme of musical ratios is that of
Eratosthenes, who makes no use of the natural Major Third.]
In Plato's time, as we can see from a well-known passage of the
_Republic_ (quoted on p. 53), the Enharmonic and Chromatic scales
were the object of much zealous study and experiment on the part of
musicians of different schools,--some seeking to measure and compare
the intervals directly by the ear, others to find numbers in the
consonances which they heard, and both, from the Platonic point of
view, 'setting ears above intelligence,' and therefore labouring in
vain[1].
The multiplicity of intervals, then, which surprises us in the
doctrine of the _genera_ and 'colours' was not an accident or
excrescence. And although some of the finer varieties, such as the
Enharmonic, belong only to the early or classical period, there is
enough to show that it continued to be characteristic of the Greek
musical system, at least until the revival of Hellenism in the age of
the Antonines. The grounds of this peculiarity may be sought partly
in the Greek temperament. We can hardly deny the Greeks the credit of
a fineness of sensibility upon which civilisation, to say the least,
has made no advance. We may note further how entirely it is in
accordance with the analogies of Greek art to find a series of
artistic types created by subtle variations within certain
well-defined limits. For the present purpose, however, it will be
enough to consider how the phenomenon is connected with other known
characteristics of Greek music,--its limited compass and probably
imperfect tonality, the thin and passionless quality of its chief
instrument, on the other hand the keen sense of differences of pitch,
the finely constructed rhythm, and finally the natural adaptation, on
which we have already dwelt, between the musical form and the
language. The last is perhaps the feature of greatest significance,
especially in a comparison of the ancient and modern types of the
art. The beauty and even the persuasive effect of a voice depend, as
we are more or less aware, in the first place upon the pitch or key
in which it is set, and in the second place upon subtle variations of
pitch, which give emphasis, or light and shade. Answering to the
first of these elements ancient music, if the main contention of this
essay is right, has its system of Modes or keys. Answering to the
second it has a series of scales in which the delicacy and variety of
the intervals still fill us with wonder. In both these points modern
music shows diminished resources. We have in the Keys the same or
even a greater command of degrees of pitch: but we seem to have lost
the close relation which once obtained between a note as the result
of physical facts and the same note as an index of temper or emotion.
A change of key affects us, generally speaking, like a change of
colour or of movement--not as the heightening or soothing of a state
of feeling. In respect of the second element of vocal expression, the
rise and fall of the pitch, Greek music possessed in the multiplicity
of its scales a range of expression to which there is no modern
parallel. The nearest analogue may be found in the use of modulation
from a Major to a Minor key, or the reverse. But the changes of genus
and 'colour' at the disposal of an ancient musician must have been
acoustically more striking, and must have come nearer to reproducing,
in an idealised form, the tones and inflexions of the speaking voice.
The tendency of music that is based upon harmony is to treat the
voice as one of a number of instruments, and accordingly to curtail
the use of it as the great source of dramatic and emotional effect.
The consequence is twofold. On the one hand we lose sight of the
direct influence exerted by sound of certain degrees of pitch on the
human sensibility, and thus ultimately on character. On the other
hand the music becomes an independent creation. It may still be a
vehicle of the deepest feeling: but it no longer seeks the aid of
language, or reaches its aim through the channels by which language
influences the mind of man.
[Footnote 1: The two schools distinguished by Plato seem to be those
which were afterwards known as the [Greek: harmonikoi] or
Aristoxeneans, and the [Greek: mathêmatikoi], who carried on the
tradition of Pythagoras. The [Greek: harmonikoi] regarded a musical
interval as a quantity which could be measured directly by the ear,
without reference to the numerical ratio upon which it might be
based. They practically adopted the system of equal temperament. The
[Greek: mathêmatikoi] sought for ratios, but by experiment 'among the
consonances which are heard,' as Plato says. Hence they failed
equally with those whose method never rose above the facts of sense.]
* * * * *
APPENDIX
TABLE I.
_Scales of the seven oldest Keys, with the species of the same name._
[Music: Mixo-lydian. _b_-species.]
[Music: Lydian. _c_-species.]
[Music: Phrygian. _d_-species.]
[Music: Dorian. _e_-species.]
[Music: Hypo-lydian. _f_-species.]
[Music: Hypo-phrygian. _g_-species.]
[Music: Hypo-dorian. _a_-species.]